@beardalaxy I don't know why, but I'm not digging the whole characters fading in and out repeatedly and the game's title moving up and down. It feels like something done using default animations in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Your game is 16-bit RPG inspired right? Most of those games had very simple title screens (just logo and a simple background or solid color). Main menus were pretty simple too. Even Final Fantasy had just a menu in front of a black background throughout the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
If you want to have good first impressions, just have a good intro/attract mode. I don't know how hard it is to do that in RPG Maker. If you can't do it in engine, I'm pretty sure you can just play a video file within RPG Maker.
ひげ
@xianc78 yeah it is 16 bit inspired, but i'm not exactly trying to make a 16 bit game, you know what i mean? it's not crazy faithful or anything. just listen to the music hahaha. i've got full paintings and a lot higher res portraits, massive maps, and stuff like that the SNES would never allow.
but yeah it does seem a little basic and not particularly in the same, simple way as the old games. i wanted to try to make the title screen a little bit interesting but not have it be way too distracting, or have an intro video that you have to skip, etc.
i don't want the title to be super static either, though. something did feel off about the character movements though for sure. maybe it would be better to just have them static at about the halfway point of that animation, and keep the title locked to the top. or perhaps i could have the title float in at the beginning and then stay locked.
an attract mode kind of thing would be interesting, i might have to give that a shot. you can do an in-engine thing and actually this whole menu is done with map events instead of using the default title (i'd probably do a video though since that would be the easier method).
funny enough, using the default title system would be a lot closer to how classic 16 bit RPGs functioned, but i know that seeing that immediately sets off triggers in a lot of people's minds that this is just a standard rpg maker shitpost game that didn't have real effort put into it.
i've also had other people tell me that the title looks really good, so maybe i'm thinking too hard about it but yeah the animation does feel like it's a little bit too much. i'll see what it looks like with the fading and bouncing removed, maybe the snow/rain is enough to make it feel lively but not distracting.
my goal with the title screen is to make it look nice and unobtrusive, where its the first thing that pops up and the player takes it in for a brief moment before they begin the game or load up a save file. an attract mode goes against that philosophy a little bit. i know it's cool to have, but it's also sort of unnecessary fluff for my goal. that's a good suggestion though. if i was trying to really emulate those old games i'd be more apt to do that. i may still try it out if the title screen i have just isn't exactly cutting it.
i actually feel like my original title screen was a bit better. it was just the title of the game moving up and down, the options, and then a red to black vertical gradient. i think i might have tried to spruce it up a bit too much here. i still want to show off matana's art in-game though and i think the title place is a pretty good spot for that. maybe i can just remove the two characters from the sides.
we'll see, i'll fuck around with it a little bit!
@beardalaxy I honestly don't know how to make it look better. You don't want to have a bunch of random PowerPoint style animations but you also don't want some static JPEG background.
Another thing you can try is have a map of one of the game's locations or the entire overworld. Have it somewhat animated like having the waves of the oceans crashing stars twinkling.
However, I can tell that your game is pretty dark judging from the basic plot, so I think a simple title screen would be more fitting for that. Look at Majora's Mask title screen compared to Ocarina of Time's title screen. The first part of MM title is pitch black with the titular mask and the Happy Mask salesman while Ocarina of Time's title screen shows Link riding his horse in Hyrule Field.
